8.23.2012

“Joan Murray [Alexander teacher] often says to me, in terms of poise, ‘It’s not about holding onto it, it’s about getting back to it when you fall off of it.’ It’s the capacity to realize ‘Oh, I’m off,’ and gently bring yourself back to a sense of more poise and balance. To me, that is a metaphor for life, really, because any kind of holding onto a way of being in a world that’s constantly changing is doomed to failure. And it will wear out your psyche and your physiology. In other words, if you’re constantly holding yourself a certain way to relate to the world, even if that worked for a little while, over time, you just wear yourself out. I find that it works much better for me to have a multitude of coping strategies for stress and living.”
-Chris Aiken